Indulge yourself today!

Bacchus wishes you a day of exhuberant self indulgence, and to kick it off in the right spirit, this is about me indulging myself. The above photo comes from one of our outings to the annual black tie ball at the Irish club. My pal White's a member and he used to book us a big round table every year (between '96 and 2001) until it all went pear-shaped. They had a regular do and a masked one. We'd alternate. The main thing was that we always used the event to come up with some photographic nonsense to run on the back of Bacchus or Deevee. For instance this is me, Minty Moore and White pretending to be 'the three tenors'.


And a year later we picked a picture out of the session from which this came to pass off as the monthly editorial meeting of Eddie Campbell Comics inc. That's Mullins, Me, Kirsten and Minty (who was contributing quite a few storylines to Bacchus back then).


Anyway, in 2000 we did the masked ball and I went as Bacchus. I used a papier mache mask that Hayley Campbell had made at school using a plastic template as the base. The other kids made clown and pussy cat faces while my daughter fashioned the dark goat-god Pan, with his horns and all. In urgent need of a mask and not having a clue how to start from scratch I acquired permission to turn Pan into Bacchus by sawing off the goat-beard and then using acrylic paints with that thickening gel, laying it on with a big impasto, moved the mouth downwards and introduced all the other distinctive facial characteristics. (There are some out there thinking that destroying my daughter's work in the process was a heinous crime against ART. I'm sorry, Kelly... I don't know what to say... the gods will punish me one day... i just hope it ain't Pan.) This is Mullins at the same event, as Dr. Zaius. Wait, it was White who arrived as Dr. Zaius, but now Mullins is wearing it home?.


A similar case of confusion happened the following year when an attractive lady mistook me for Arnold Schwarzenegger. One of my pals overheard this and, what with me being a long skinny geezer and the other guy being Mr. 'pumping iron', not to mention me lingering a little too long at the site of this implausible compliment, suddenly our table was beside itself with uncontrollable mirth. The wife thought the joke was on her, instead of me, and took umbrage.
And that was the end of our annual black tie ball.
Nice mask though?

A merry Christmas to yez. An a happy new yair.